


(S)Takeout

by cognomen



Category: Person Of Interest - Fandom
Genre: M/M, post episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-31
Updated: 2012-08-31
Packaged: 2017-11-13 06:02:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/500283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post 'Witness', written for the prompt: 'Focus on how Scarface is really protective and got worried about his boss during Witness or on how they’re basically Reese and Finch, but with more evil and fewer trust issues.' </p><p>"I'm fine," Elias says, and he looks mostly whole but Jack can smell the blood and see the stiffness in his shoulder, and that's a failure he feels acutely even if he was doing his best to hold the snake from the other end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(S)Takeout

**Author's Note:**

  * For [livenudebigfoot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/livenudebigfoot/gifts).



Jack leans in and puts his mouth against the space at the back of Elias' ear, ostensibly a holdover from his mafia days but - this is closer. He pulls in his boss' scent like he can discern where Elias has been in the meantime and any harm he'd seek revenge for later. Their joined hands press together between their hips and Jacks free hand curls around Elias' opposite elbow. It's longer than a brief touch, but after the time apart, he feels he has to re-cement the contact. As if either needed reminding of what it was for that to be gone. 

"I'm fine," Elias says, and he looks mostly whole but Jack can smell the blood and see the stiffness in his shoulder, and that's a failure he feels acutely even if he was doing his best to hold the snake from the other end.

Elias disengages his fingers and lifts his hand, pressing the backs of his knuckles against Jack's chest to suggest he was done being so close, and Jack surrenders the contact only reluctantly. He bristles a little to have to trust him in the wide and exposed world so soon after he'd been in real trouble. He does it anyway, but he can't calm his nerves, has to move out and ahead to keep his hands from gravitating back toward contact. He puts them on other things instead; the gate, to let Elias through first. On the door latch to the car, white knuckled until they can get _out_ of there.

"It went well on your end?" Elias asks as they drive and Jack does his best to measure everything he owns so he doesn't have to pull the car over and discover the exact size and dimensions of the hole in his boss. If anyone's still alive, Jack will give them matching considerations, at least. 

"Like it was supposed to," Jack answers, watching the speedometer from the corner of his eyes and holding it at 45, holding his breaths to an even cadence, holding the wheel like if he let go the whole car might fall apart.

"What gave on your side?" and it's the sort of question he never _means_ to ask, the doubting-authority kind, but now that he has, he still wants an answer. Elias looks up at his reflection in the rear-view mirror, un-appreciative of all the concern by this point.

He doesn't answer either, leaving Jack tense and unable to lay blame on any appropriate shoulders.

"Where are we going?" Elias asks, after a couple of minutes.

"Home." Jack answers, because that should be obvious. Not Elias' home, because that was a bust now, or even the safe house. The guys they left handcuffed on the boat would be out for blood, and no level of account management and dummy corporations would make him feel okay until he was sure they were both capable again.

"I was thinking we'd celebrate," Elias says, and Jack could turn around in his driver's seat and wrap his hands around his boss' neck for his ideas of taunting the enemy with leisure and excess. "With dinner."

Jack doesn't contradict him on the idea verbally, but he's the one driving the car and he refuses to alter course. They're going to ground, _hard_ , until they can recollect themselves.

"Don't you see? They had me but they didn't even know it. It went perfectly."

Jack sets his teeth, measures his breaths to counts of ten. Signals when he turns. He sees _exactly_ that he had been sent too far ahead, and one slip, one mis-step and he'd still have been halfway across the city and unable to stop it.

"Dinner?" Elias reminds, but the politeness in his tone has an edge, a warning.

"We'll get takeout." 

The atmosphere in the car changes, but Elias is patient. Jack is, too. He has fewer blind spots, because he's impersonal except in one specific instance. The specific instance says nothing when they go around the block twice and then take a divertive figure eight loop through one way streets until Jack is satisfied and finally pulls into the parking garage attached to the building.

The stony silence that greets him when he holds the back door of the car open for Elias and then hovers at his side, blocking opportunities with his body mass until he's sure of the situation suggest Elias isn't forgetting his disregard for orders in any foreseeable amount of time. 

But he greets the guards imperiously, reassuring the boys that everything went the way he intended and hiding his injury with his posture upright and his smile bright around the grimace, and Jack knows he'd have done it all night if allowed. Elias had no patience for weakness. There was just that brutality in him that made him effective and quick when he finally moved. Unhesitating.

Jack endures the catchup in silence, but the boys do go when they're done congratulating and showing respect (showing their bellies), and that seems to ease his boss a little. Jack relaxes a fraction when the door closes behind them and he can lock it and turn on the monitor in the kitchen that showed his hall, the downstairs keyless entry, the fire escapes.

He's returning to the coffee pot with a full pot of water when the rebuke comes unexpected and from behind, and Elias has the advantage of height and a familiar presence so before Jacks instincts warn him his hips are slamming into the edge of the counter hard enough that he feels the exact dimensions of the edge imprint themselves in his middle and the bones spark pain from the bruising. He pulls in a sharp breath and the pain overrides the sensation of _wet_ for a moment, while Elias pins him mercilessly and Jack realizes the glass carafe has shattered in his hand and soaked his front. The counter is dripping broken glass in the rush and flood of water to the floor.

Elias closes a hand at the back of Jack's neck and presses with all the strength of a steel trap closing, and Jack has always _known_ there was that much strength in Elias' hands, but when there's the dull inescapable agony of Elias' thumb pressing opposite his pointer finger high up on Jack's neck and just under his skull he _realizes_ it. Elias' injured hand is flat in counterpoint in the small of Jack's back, pushing until he can't get enough leverage and Jack is half bent over the counter top.

He caught himself on his hands and he doesn't move them - except to let go of the pot's disembodied handle, because there's glass everywhere and Elias has the advantage of balance. 

Elias says nothing, just holds the pressure until Jack _has_ to relax to ease the pain in his neck, until he _has_ to submit because Jack is smart enough to know why this is happening. If he wasn't, he'd never have been close enough to make the wrong move in the first place. The warning is clear. It's Jack's only chance.

But he can also feel the way Elias' skin has gone heated from the ordeal, and smell the old blood from the un-tended wound now joined by the sharper mouth-tasted tang of new blood where exertion has made it seep and the tremble in the fingers pressed against Jack's lower back. He hasn't wasted his one defiance. 

Jack counts slowly and relaxes as much as he can, against all his training and instincts and forces himself to _trust_. When he's finally there, finally submits all the way, Jack realizes he can _think_ again. As bad as things were today, they did not fail, and Elias was not incapacitated. He was whole and alive and vital, and shoving Jack into the counter with a strength that reminded Jack why he followed the man in the first place. Tension snaps out of him like a cord wound too taut, and he breathes out, laughing carefully - not so much he would antagonize his boss.

"Well, I hope you like instant coffee," is what he says, and the pinch on his neck lessens slightly. Jack uncurls his hands so they lay flat on the counter, and leans back a little - not a request for space, just for the contact. 

Elias doesn't say anything, but his grip eases and he sighs, shifting to look around Jack at the broken coffee pot, and then rubbing gently where his fingers had pressed to begin to ease the ache there. He has ceased to be angry, and instead has recovered his patience. He doesn't lay down any laws, doesn't verbalize his reprimand.

"What do I do about you?" he asks instead, rhetorically, and Jack pushes back a little more firmly, to ease the pressure of the counter against his middle. He doesn't bother to pretend he hasn't noticed the proximity. Instead, his touch changes, his hands shift until they become more possessive, curled high around Jack's middle for a start. Jack can feel the curl of Elias' body against his back, and the point of his chin where he's tipped his head back to rest over Jack's shoulder. 

Elias pulls him back from the counter, and Jack steps carefully to avoid the broken glass that has ebbed onto the floor, sparing his bare feet. They back together until Elias can put his own back against the wall beside the refrigerator, keeping Jack snug against him - where Jack can see the monitor that shows his security camera's footage, can see the quiet unoccupation of the building at this hour of night and Jack can feel him closed in behind him, body as blocked in as possible. Safe.

Then Elias' hands slide down, and Jack covers them with his own wet hands and pushes, too. Not to demand, but to avoid confusion, to avoid questions. Elias takes the hint, and they both curl hands over Jack's dick while he divides his attention between the breaths on the back of his neck and the views the cameras offer. The inactivity, silent quiet safety that suggests no one has breached this far. 

Elias grips him tighter through his pants, curls his fingers more firmly until Jack can really feel it, wants to protest the constriction but doesn't. He understands who is setting the pace, and relents, just covering Elias' hands with his own. He watches the tick of timestamp numbers in rhythm, and feels the pull of fingers - casual, slow - in counterpoint to his own pulse. It's soothing, in a way, but at the same time he's winding up slow, feeling his breath speed up as if his own body is unattached to his mind while he watches the silent streets, the quiet halls. 

Jack finally opens his mouth to pull air in faster when Elias relents on the matter of his zipper, tucking his fingers inside Jack's pants to make the contact skin-on-skin but no less confined. There, and _safe, but don't challenge me_ , all in the unspoken communications that Jack feels far more acutely than words, and he lets the tension in his knees out a little, leans back until Elias takes his weight and keeps them braced against the wall, but he never stops watching. Never stops seeing how they aren't pursued, even as the friction from his jeans becomes more like pain, but the pace goes on unrelenting and his eyes try to close as the touch of the wet fabric almost becomes too much. The whole of it is overbearing, real, uncomfortable but undeniable and Jack reaches back to get two hand holds in Elias' shirt as if he could save himself that way from going all the way down into this.

He's already there, and he pulls his lip between his teeth to bite back the sounds he makes, feeling scraped as raw as his skin is by wet denim, as deeply aching as the abused pressure points on the back of his neck. But he comes anyway, and only then does he stop watching the camera feeds and surrender.


End file.
